


A Question of Fairness

by vials



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, action pug, reluctant consequence facing, things not going to plan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7860250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy thought that if he could just see Harry one more time, everything would be alright. Turns out things are much more complicated than that, because after all, there's no "right" way to come back from the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was JB’s growling that woke Eggsy up, sounding unnaturally ominous in the stillness. He lay there for a moment as though pretending he were still asleep, his heart kicking up to a more rapid place as he realised that he most certainly wasn’t alone. JB continued to growl, and eventually Eggsy propped himself up on his elbows, squinting through the darkness towards the end of the bed. JB was standing right on the very edge, facing the door and growling low in the back of his throat.

“JB,” Eggsy whispered. “Shh!”

The pug responded with a short snarl, but obediently fell silent. Eggsy’s eyes were adjusting slightly now, and he could see that while JB was no longer growling, he was still tense, his fur sticking up and his teeth showing, glinting white in the dark. Eggsy listened hard to the silence, trying to pick up on anything that would give him a clue. The house remained still, and all Eggsy could hear was the occasional drip of a tap somewhere in the kitchen. 

Ridiculously, Eggsy found himself thinking about ghosts. It would have been a stupid thought in the middle of the day – hell, even JB’s growling would have probably been humorous in the safety and company of daylight – but in the middle of the night with everything so heavy around him and JB staring rigidly at something Eggsy couldn’t see, it didn’t seem so amusing.

_There’s no such thing as ghosts_ , he told himself, slightly bitterly. He had given up on those ideas when he had been a child, when night after night there had been no sign of his father; not even a glimpse, not even a whisper, not even a pocket of cold air to let Eggsy know that he was still there in some form. Eggsy had vowed never to believe in such nonsense ever again, and never had his resolve been tested more thoroughly than in the lonely weeks after Harry had died. Perhaps he hadn’t done the best job at avoiding the temptation to believe in such things, considering he was currently staying in Harry’s house, in Harry’s bed, but if ghosts didn’t exist then Eggsy was going to feel close to him in whatever way he could.

JB was still standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the door, and Eggsy knew the dog was fighting the urge to begin growling again. Whatever he had seen was obviously still there, and Eggsy felt a flicker of frustration. Why was he sitting here so terrified? It wasn’t as though he feared intruders, exactly – if anyone was here to kill him, they would have made a go of it already. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew that once he turned on that light, any fantasy he was entertaining would be undoubtedly proven wrong – that despite the fact he told himself he didn’t believe in ghosts, there was a part of him playing with the idea that he would turn on the light and see Harry standing there.

_Just a few seconds_ , he thought, tensing his jaw against the tightness threatening in his throat. _That’s all I’d need. Just to say goodbye_.

Eggsy reached out slowly, feeling for the cord on the bedside lamp. He felt it brush against his fingers and caught hold of it, taking a slow breath. He thought about counting to three and decided that would be stupid, so instead he quickly tugged the cord before he could lose his nerve.

The room was bathed in a warm orange glow, the gap where the door was open pitch black. For a moment there was nothing, and then JB let out a sharp bark and Eggsy saw a flash of movement at the door, the gap suddenly no longer as dark, the picture hanging in the hall opposite the bedroom visible again.

JB bounded off the bed and, still barking, took off into the hallway. Eggsy swore under his breath and stumbled after him, nearly tripping over the bottom of his trousers as he did so – they were Harry’s, and slightly too long for him. He tugged them up as he reached the door, pulling it open and hurrying out into the hallway. He switched the light on as he ran past it, just in time to see JB skidding clumsily around the corner towards the stairs. Eggsy could already hear someone running down them; JB’s loud thumping joined them, and Eggsy caught up to the top of the stairs and went for the bannister instead.

He and JB reached the bottom at around the same time, just as Eggsy heard someone fumbling with the back door. Four legs served JB with a slight advantage and the pug ran ahead, vanishing into the darkness of the kitchen, and seconds later Eggsy heard a muffled bark and someone letting out what was, considering the circumstances, a very tame curse.

“Ow—bloody dog!”

Eggsy had been ready to charge into the kitchen without a moment’s hesitation, but the sound of that voice drained all the adrenaline from him in one cold rush and he stopped dead in his tracks, his chest tight.

“ _JB_! Stop it, boy, come on, now. Don’t be an idiot. You know who I am.”

Eggsy heard JB give another cautious growl, before he evidently decided he did recognise the voice, after all. Eggsy could hear his tail wagging from where he stood – or, rather, the pug’s entire back end going from side to side, hitting against the cupboard doors. 

“I think someone else does, too, if he’s declined to come in here by now,” Harry said, a little louder, and Eggsy remained rooted to the spot, his face suddenly feeling far too warm. He realised he was clenching his fists tightly at his sides, on the verge of trembling, but he didn’t know why. Any attempt to make sense of his rushing thoughts failed, and he thought he might have stayed there for the rest of the night if Harry hadn’t switched on the light in the kitchen.

He looked mostly the same as Eggsy remembered, with the exception of the patch he was now wearing over one eye. Everything else was the same – the hair, the clothing, the slight crinkle at the corner of the eye Eggsy could see. JB was sniffing around his shoes, as though he was also trying to work out if Harry was actually there. 

“Hello, Eggsy,” Harry said, and finally, _finally_ , Eggsy remembered how to speak.

“What the hell was that?” he said loudly. It hadn’t been what he had expected to say, but it was better than nothing. “You know that’s real creepy, right? You can’t just stand there in the doorway and watch someone sleep like some kind of – of – I don’t even know, weird vampire or something. That ain’t – it’s not – for someone who goes on all the time about manners that ain’t very polite.”

“My apologies,” Harry said, before giving a slight smile. “But I didn’t exactly expect to find someone sleeping in my own bed.”

“That’s the thing when you die,” Eggsy said, but his anger was lost slightly with the way his voice caught on the words. “People get the impression that you ain’t gonna need stuff like your bed anymore.”

There was a brief silence, and Eggsy got the impression that Harry was giving him a moment to collect himself. He needed it, though he didn’t want to admit it. His throat was still painfully tight, his face still slightly too warm, and there was a part of him that was utterly convinced this was a dream. That was the part that hurt the most. The fact that at any moment, he could wake up and find Harry was—

“What were you doing?” he demanded, because he didn’t want to think about that. “If it’s your house, why were you running off like that?”

“Well,” Harry said, for the first time looking a little awkward. “I can’t say I was expecting to find you here. This was a conversation I was hoping to have at a time where I would be a little better prepared. Unfortunately for me, it seems JB’s training has continued to go exceptionally well.”

Eggsy realised he was still standing rigidly in the doorway; he leaned against the frame in the hope that he would appear more confident than he actually felt, because none of this made sense and he was pretty certain that if he didn’t have the doorframe to support him, he might end up on the ground.

“Oh?” he asked. “Out of pure interest here, but how did you plan for this conversation to go down?”

“I had hoped I could have at least let some of the others know first,” Harry said, glancing down as JB continued to investigate his shoes. “After all, there isn’t exactly a protocol for this. I was hoping that things would go as smoothly as possible.”

“Smoothly as possible, huh?” Eggsy asked, his tone slightly bitter again. “Listen, I don’t know what kind of crazy stunt you were pulling but I’m pretty sure, like, as in about one hundred per cent sure, that you got shot in the head. Now, I ain’t a doctor, but I’m under the impression that if something like that don’t straight up kill you dead on the spot, you’re gonna have a lot of recovering to do. And not all of that is gonna be as a vegetable. So.” Eggsy looked at Harry and raised an eyebrow. “Do you not think that it might have all gone a little smoother if you’d just let us know you were alive before you showed up? Or did you just assume no one would give a crap?”

Harry stared at him for a long moment, and at least had the decency to look a little ashamed. 

“It’s a complicated situation,” he eventually said. “Sometimes it’s easier to do these things in person. Less finicky for everyone, and a lot fairer, I would think.”

“Fairer?” Eggsy snorted. “Yeah, it’s totally fair, showing up to a bunch of your grieving friends and colleagues and scaring the crap out of them, then wanting to get right down to business. That’s really fair, Harry. I’m sure they’ll agree wholeheartedly.”

“Eggsy,” Harry said, sounding slightly exasperated.

“Here’s the thing, Harry,” Eggsy said, and he felt suddenly warm again and it was an effort to keep from shaking. “I hope they treat you with the _upmost_ fairness, because I sure as hell wouldn’t. You don’t get to just – to fuck off like that and then come back and expect – and think –”

Eggsy didn’t even know why he was angry. He didn’t know if he was angry at all, if he were honest with himself, but it was easier to feel angry than to feel so stupid and so betrayed and so lied to. All those nights he had spent staring up at a dark ceiling and trying to ignore the pain in his chest and Harry had been alive somewhere, not saying anything, just letting them all suffer.

He should be angry. He knew that. He had every right to be angry. But that didn’t explain why he could barely focus on it without feeling guilty, without remembering all the times he had wished for this moment and now he was ruining it by being _angry_. 

“Eggsy,” Harry said again, gently this time, and Eggsy ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head.

“You are a complete tosser,” he said, and it didn’t quite do the situation justice but it was a start.

“I suppose that’s a fair assessment, given the circumstances,” Harry said, giving a thin smile. “I am sorry, Eggsy. For not telling you sooner, and for the way things went tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eggsy said. It wasn’t good enough, but at the same time, he didn’t have the energy to fight any more. He didn’t _want_ to fight. “Maybe come grovel in the morning, alright? Give you a chance to prepare yourself or whatever.”

He turned and headed back out into the hallway; Harry glanced down at JB, who was sitting next to him, looking up at him with his tongue lolling out.

“Well, that went wonderfully, didn’t it?” he asked the dog, before giving a sigh and heading out into the hallway after Eggsy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it would get slightly less angsty in this chapter, but apparently not.

When Eggsy woke up, he was immediately aware of two things. The first was that he had had a really weird and oddly realistic dream about chasing Harry through the house in the middle of the night, and the second was that the whole house smelled like bacon. Eggsy propped himself up on his shoulders, frowning as he realised JB was absent from the foot of the bed. Eggsy was fairly certain that JB hadn’t finally learned to cook himself bacon, but that left only one other possibility and Eggsy wasn’t sure which one was the more unrealistic one.

“No way,” he muttered, flopping back down onto the bed. He could remember everything clearly now, with the most important fact being that it hadn’t been a dream after all. Eggsy found himself wondering if he should be relieved or not. On the one hand, that meant that Harry was definitely, undeniably alive. On the other hand, Eggsy hadn’t quite managed to forget all the mixed feelings from the night before, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t still pissed. 

It took him several minutes to drag himself out of bed, grabbing one of Harry’s bath robes from where it hung on the back of the bathroom door. He shuffled downstairs, trying not to think too much about how the smell of the bacon was making his mouth water. He would be damned if he let Harry win him over with bacon. That trick might work on JB, but Eggsy liked to think he played a harder game.

“Good morning, Eggsy,” Harry said, perfectly normal, as though this was something they did every morning. Eggsy raised an eyebrow, leaning up against one of the counters and eyeing JB, who was waiting patiently at Harry’s feet, tail twitching. 

_Traitor_ , Eggsy thought, barely supressing a grin. The whole thing was ridiculous.

“Is this the usual coming back from the dead affair?” Eggsy asked, nodding to the bacon and the buttered bread waiting for it. “Or am I a special exception?”

“Well, being alive does bring with it certain necessities,” Harry said. “Like eating, for example. And given the fact that this is still technically my house, I didn’t feel too bad helping myself. I do hope you don’t think this is some farfetched plan to try and win you over.”

“It crossed my mind,” Eggsy said. “But then I thought it would be a plan better suited to JB. Seems I was right.”

“You’re welcome to sit this one out, if you feel it would be a betrayal of any points you’re trying to make.”

Eggsy watched the bacon as Harry began making the sandwiches. 

“Nah,” he said. “I didn’t say nothing about that.”

There was something especially surreal about sitting at the breakfast table with Harry, both of them eating in silence that could have passed for comfortable if it wasn’t for the fact that Eggsy was still desperately trying to make sense of the past twelve hours. There was a part of him that was still convinced he would wake up and realise the whole thing had been a dream, and he didn’t know if he was hoping for that or not. It would certainly be less complicated, but Eggsy felt stupid for thinking it. How many times had he wished for a chance like this? How many times had he thought he would do anything to have Harry back? He wished he could just enjoy it, but apparently coming back from the dead was a lot more complicated than he had originally anticipated. 

He was still angry, and part of him hated himself for it. He absently fed JB scraps of bacon, wishing, absurdly, that he could have accepted Harry’s return as easily as the pug had. 

“How long have you being staying here?” Harry asked conversationally, and Eggsy tried to work out if he was annoyed or not. He got the impression it was a genuine question, reminding himself that Harry couldn’t exactly start getting annoyed with him now, given the circumstances.

“Since you—” Eggsy began, planning to say the word died as though it were perfectly normal, just a standard answer to a standard question, but the word humiliated him by catching in his throat. Eggsy quickly cleared it, hoping it would just look as though he had swallowed his food wrong. Harry didn’t rescue him, and Eggsy had no choice but to try again. “Since it happened,” he finished, hating how obvious it sounded.

“Ah,” Harry said, almost sadly, and there was another long pause before he spoke again. “I assume you saw the whole thing.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said, before glancing up at him, unable to keep the slight smirk off his face. “What the fuck, Harry.”

Harry gave a one-shouldered shrug, and Eggsy immediately felt bad. 

“I don’t like… blame you, or nothing,” he added quickly. “I know that weren’t you. I mean, it happened to everyone, but I guess it was just bad luck that you’re like… highly trained, and all that.”

“It was regrettable,” Harry said, his voice sounding a little gruff, and for the first time Eggsy found himself wondering just what it had been like for Harry over the past few months. He felt guilt pooling in the pit of his stomach, mixing with the anger that was already there, and he fought the urge to groan. As if everything hadn’t been complicated enough, he now had to deal with feeling bad for Harry as well as still being rightfully pissed at him. 

“How did you like… not die?” Eggsy asked, because that was the easiest question to focus on. “I mean, I saw it. He shot you right in the head.”

Harry gave a thin smile, tapping at his eye patch.

“He had a weakness for blood,” he said. “He wasn’t looking at me when he fired the gun. The bullet went slightly off centre and hit my eye instead. My glasses slowed the bullet down exponentially, and the bullet shrapnel and glass unfortunately resulted in the loss of my eye but no further injury. Thankfully, no one bothered to check I was dead. I suppose that hatred of blood was a blessing in more ways than one.”

Eggsy raised an eyebrow, impressed. “What the hell are those glasses made out of?”

“They’re highly reinforced,” Harry explained. “They have to be, considering what they are. The glass is incredibly hard, and it was only a nine millimetre round. Perfectly survivable if slowed down or damaged. Generally Kingsman glasses are only expected to have to survive a fight or a fall, but it’s nice to know they serve other uses.”

“Like deflecting bullets,” Eggsy said, still in a slight state of disbelief. Harry smiled.

“Like deflecting bullets,” he agreed. “I’ll admit the loss of my eye is slightly inconvenient, but it wouldn’t be fitting to complain given the rest of the circumstances. I got off rather lightly, I think.”

“Could have been worse,” Eggsy agreed, and somehow he managed to keep it at that. There was still plenty that he wanted to say, but his conscience wouldn’t quite allow him to do it when Harry was sitting next to him looking so dejected. Eggsy hadn’t thought too much about the footage he had seen for obvious reasons, but now he realised that he had been so fixated on Harry’s apparent death that he hadn’t quite realised the weight the rest of it must be on the man.

“I suppose this is a good time to admit that I wasn’t entirely honest with you last night,” Harry said, quite suddenly, and Eggsy looked at him.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You know, aside from the whole not telling anyone you were actually alive thing?”

“I was referring to my reasoning, actually,” Harry said, giving another thin smile, and Eggsy tossed JB the last bit of bacon before looking back at him, some of his earlier sympathy fading.

“Do I want to hear this?” he asked. 

“Something tells me that you will eventually,” Harry answered. “Though of course I understand if now isn’t exactly a good time.”

“I don’t think there’s ever gonna be a good time for this, Harry,” Eggsy said, slumping back in his seat. “Let’s hear it, then.”

“It was cowardly,” Harry said, and Eggsy wondered how the man managed to keep his voice so steady when discussing such things. “But considering the circumstances surrounding my death – mainly, the ones immediately before it – I didn’t know what kind of consequences I might face upon my return. I thought it best to keep my distance and observe for a while before returning, just in case my actions were looked upon unfavourably.”

Eggsy paused for a moment, frowning. “What, like, you didn’t want to go to jail or nothing?”

“Perhaps not jail,” Harry said. “But certainly I feared dismissal.”

“From like, being a Kingsman and all?”

Harry nodded, and Eggsy’s frown deepened.

“But they can’t kick you out for that. That wasn’t your fault. No one could help it. Literally the whole world went crazy and the only reason the rest of us didn’t get hit by it was because we weren’t anywhere near the signal. No one could blame you for that.”

“Oh, I doubt I would have been _blamed_ ,” Harry said. “But you have to understand what it would look like. Such psychological corruptions are vastly misunderstood, and as you yourself pointed out, it isn’t a good idea to have someone as highly trained as I am potentially wired to lose control like that. Plus there is a certain element of shame to it… as Kingsmen, we try to protect rather than harm, and while the people in that church weren’t the most savoury of characters, they hardly deserved what happened to them.”

Eggsy snorted. “Sure some people would disagree.”

“Then they should do it themselves,” Harry said evenly, and Eggsy immediately felt bad again.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just… if you had to pick a bunch of people to kill, better it be a church full of racists than like, a school or something. You feel me?”

“To do anything against one’s free will is a violation, no matter the fine print,” Harry said, and Eggsy couldn’t ignore the way his words had become short. He realised that this was one of those situations that probably couldn’t be fixed with a light-hearted quip, which was unsettling, as Eggsy had found those were the only situations he was good at fixing.

“I don’t know how much it means, considering you know I’m pissed at you,” he said carefully. “But I am sorry that happened to you.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, slightly stuff, and they cleaned up in silence.

When it reached the point where there would be no reason for Eggsy to stay in the room, he realised he was going to have to break the silence. It wasn’t as though he wanted to stay in the room with Harry constantly, but he didn’t feel quite ready to leave him yet, and besides, there was still that niggling, irrational thought in the back of his mind that told him this still couldn’t be real, and that if he left the room for too long he would find that Harry had vanished to god knows where or he would wake up and realise that he had never even been there to begin with.

“So like…” Eggsy said, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. “What now? Do you want me to like, leave or whatever? This being your house and all.”

“You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like,” Harry told him. “Though I will ask that you take the spare bedroom. I do miss my own bed.”

“Suppose that’s fair,” Eggsy said.

“Do you want to stay?” Harry asked, and Eggsy felt suddenly in the spotlight, not realising that he would eventually be the one answering questions rather than asking them.

“I mean, like – I don’t really have any strong opinion, or nothing, I was just wondering, because it’s your house –”

Eggsy broke off, noticing something almost fond in the way that Harry was looking at him. He wasn’t sure if he should feel frustrated or not. It was evident that something in his blustering had amused Harry, and Eggsy was fairly certain he knew why, but at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to commit to being annoyed by the look. It was such a familiar look, the same one Harry had given him when he had pushed his luck a little in training, when he had said things that weren’t entirely acceptable but weren’t all that offensive, either; the look he gave him when he was letting him get away with something, because he understood that Eggsy was the kind of character who needed a bit of leeway to be himself. 

_It adds to your charm_ , Harry had once told him, and Eggsy had laughed and asked him, what charm? 

“Eggsy?” Harry asked, breaking through his thoughts. “Are you alright?”

Eggsy nodded, even though he could feel his eyes were burning. 

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered, his throat suddenly tight. He leaned his head back slightly, blinking. 

“Eggsy –”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

“If I said anything to upset you, I apologise.”

“You didn’t _say anything_ that upset me,” Eggsy said, snorting. “Christ, Harry, I think there are bigger issues at hand here, don’t you?”

“A fair point,” Harry agreed.

“I just—” Eggsy broke off, giving a rough sigh and trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “I thought you were dead, alright? I know it keeps coming back to this but it’s a bit of a shock. And now we’re just like… standing in your kitchen discussing if I’m gonna take the spare room and the whole thing is a bit unbelievable. I thought you were _dead_. And it sucked… a _lot_ but I accepted you were dead, you know? I did all my wishing before, like, that there would be a mistake or that the person would just somehow _come back_ and I realised it was all _bullshit_ so I never bothered hoping it with you but you came back and it’s a bit complicated, right? It’s like, how did you manage to come back and—never mind, actually, it’s stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid,” Harry told him, and again Eggsy found himself wondering how he always managed to sound so calm. Compared to his own voice, barely able to remain steady, it was even more obvious.

“It is,” Eggsy said, shaking his head. “It’s dumb.”

“Your father didn’t come back because he died, Eggsy,” Harry said, and Eggsy closed his eyes for a moment, wishing that Harry didn’t have such a knack for knowing what he meant. “Had he survived his injuries I’m sure he would have come back to you the moment he was able to. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I, however, did survive, and that is the only reason why I’m here and your father isn’t. I know it’s difficult to understand, when you gave me up for dead and this goes against the reality that you believed for some time. But there’s nothing further to it. Your father died, and I didn’t. This is an already complicated situation and you don’t deserve to have it complicated further.”

It was several moments before Eggsy trusted himself to speak again.

“It was like losing him again, y’know?” he said, his voice quiet, his eyes still squeezed closed. “Not just because it was like, someone dying. But because like. Me and you, you know? We were close, and I guess we kind of still are, but like… I don’t know, but I looked up to you a lot. I still do. You did a lot for me, and I think that— you know, without you, without you believing in me, like, what would I have done? I’d have ended up in the nick again, I bet, and what’s the point in that? You sort of like, showed me life was worth doing something with, and then you died, and it ain’t like when your granny dies or something because that’s sad but it’s not the same thing, yeah? Losing your dad, or losing someone who believes that much in you, it’s different. I wanted to like— I wanted to do better for you. I wanted you to be proud of me.”

“I know what you did, Eggsy,” Harry said gently. “And I am so very proud of you.”

Eggsy held it together for a few seconds before he let out a sob, biting it back a second too late. There was a beat of silence, and then he heard footsteps as Harry crossed the room. He briefly thought about running, but then Harry had pulled him into a tight hug and Eggsy could do nothing but cling to him and let the tears finally come.


End file.
